Dreams of Being a Kiwi

By Paul Dore

Our hero hit rock bottom long ago. Suffering from a debilitating mental illness, he finds himself tucked away in a hospital. Despair kicks in and he sees no way out of the darkness. Then a kiwi comes along and brings hope into his existence. He soon fills his days and nights with dreams of travelling across the world to a new and peaceful life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Dore Creative Services
• Release date: Oct 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781999406707

Paul Dore

Paul Dore is the author of Dreams of Being a Kiwi and The Walking Man, which the Quill & Quire called, "A globetrotting tale that imagines new ways to get at what's really going on." He lives in Toronto with his aloe plants Peter and Mary. To learn more, visit pauldore.com.

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cover-image, Dreams-of-Being-a-Kiwi

Dreams of Being a Kiwi

A Novel by Paul Dore

Also by Paul Dore: The Walking Man.

Copyright © 2018 by Paul Dore

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by Paul Dore Creative Services. 1 Shaw Street, Suite 316, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M6K 0A1, pauldore.com.

Book design by Paul Dore Creative Services.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Dore, Paul, 1978 - author

Dreams of Being a Kiwi / Paul Dore.

ISBN 978-1-9994067-0-7 (epub)

ISBN 978-1-9994067-1-4 (kindle)

ISBN 978-1-9994067-2-1 (pdf)

ISBN 978-1-9994067-3-8 (paperback)

For Phoenix

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

Something gnawed away at me on the inside that was not quite right.

Yet consistent.

Always there.

For a long time, nothing surfaced because everyone else was the same and I was completely healthy, although I grew to be suspect of the word healthy. From an outside perspective, there was no indication of anything awry. No signs that could be considered different than others. No undertow of darkness distancing myself from those around me.

Not yet, anyway. That comes later. Soon though!

School was not for me. Other kids were much further ahead in the development department. School didn't like me, I didn't fit in, had no friends. Lots of time on my own, it made no difference to me. A typical situation: the other kids made fun of me, called me crazy, and boy, in the way some people looked at it, they didn't know how right they were! The other kids were somewhat balanced - not especially cruel, just not kind.

My family moved a few times to a few different cities. They all formed together, the cities. All looked the same, those places. The kids in my classes always different, yet always the same. The outcast in every new situation, never made any real friends, never developed any real friendships. They never knew the real me, which in retrospect was probably a good thing.

The physical surroundings and my inside preoccupations never matched up, never felt like home. I did what was required of me - all my chores and school work. The key to harmony? Invisibility. I became the invisible boy. A genuine fear was to upset anyone. A word or action that drew a sideways glance with eyes full of pity, full of fear, full of disgrace.

My only friend was my older sister. She looked out for me, intimidated anyone that intimidated me. She walked with me to school, walked me back from school. We ate breakfast, lunch and dinner together. She was attentive to me, helped with my homework, gave me books to read. She had eight more years of experience than me on this earth. Always there when I needed her, there even when I didn’t need her.

The closest thing I had to a real friendship ended badly. So poorly I wished it never happened. Wished I never knew this person. No names used to protect the guilty, but the memory a tattoo etched on the inside of my skull. That memory needed to be ripped out.

God knew I tried. God knew.

This boy talked to me one day in the hallway. One of the older popular kids whose kind never crossed the line over to my side. This just never happened! We hung out after school, walked to school, walked back from school. My sister left us alone, happy I had a friend.

Happiness never lasted.

Playing in the park where thick bushes lined the parameter. My friend suggested we hide in the bushes and ambush someone. Crawling through the bushes got us all scratched up. Crawled until we reached a small clearing in the middle of the bushes.

He had been there before.

The playing stopped, he looked at me funny. Asked if I wanted to play a different game, said I had to do everything he asked. I just wanted him to be my friend. He undid the button on my pants, pulled down my pants, an uncomfortable cloud spread from that area and encompassed my entire body. I knew not what to do. I knew not what this meant. How could I possibly have known what the implications were in allowing him to touch me? Afterward, I wrestled with the fact that I allowed him to touch me.

Allowed him.

Followed instructions.

The invisible boy.

Coming out of the bushes, I wanted only to never to see this friend again. The only friend I ever had. He told me not to tell anyone about what happened in those bushes. Swore to myself I'd die before I told anyone.

Darkness descended as I walked home alone. No appetite for dinner, no talking to anyone. Locked myself in the bathroom. Took a long bath, scrubbed every part of my body, double-scrubbed my pelvic area, lay down on my bed. My sister knocked on the door, came inside, knelt down beside my bed. Her eyes looked into my eyes and my eyes started crying. Impossible that any secrets were kept from my sister. She put her hand on my shoulder and I flinched. She only asked me one question, not more than one, promised never to ask me to tell her something that I did not want her to know. She asked: Who was it? Still no talking from me, only slightly shook my head. I never wanted this feeling. Wanted to sleep. Wanted these thoughts to leave.

Go away bad thoughts.

The next morning, my eyes opened and found my sister asleep on the floor beside me. She never left. She woke up when I touched her shoulder. Told her a name, she nodded her head.

That person never did anything like that again, not to me or anyone else. The message was clear: she told my friend that if he told anyone it was my sister that hurt him, there would be more trouble.

During those years, two specific experiences changed everything. In many ways, determined my life.

The first thing really blew up in our faces. My parents stopped talking to each other. We stopped eating together, did nothing together. My sister and I made our own family of two, my parents were just not interested in us. In some ways, I didn’t blame them for anything. Was this kind of thing ever anyone’s fault? They were not right for each other, not right for us. They just learned it too late. They had good intentions going in, but were good intentions ever enough? My sister and I dealt with it, carried on, kept calm, made our own lives away from them.

The second thing much more immediate, much scarier: the voice. Started the year I turned twelve, the year I was growing hair in new places, the time new thoughts came about myself and other people. The voice entered my head, not in a dramatic way, it was always there. Always a narrator speaking, dictating what was happening around me, commentating like a television sportscaster. Sounded like what I imagined my own voice sounded like. Nothing it said was necessarily untrue, just weird it was even there.

The problem came when this voice amplified, like it came from outside of my head. Whispered to me over my left shoulder. Whispered into my ear. I wondered if other people heard it, did other people have voices whispering in their ears? Tried to ignore it at first, but it just got louder the more I ignored it. Originally it was comforting. Thought the voice was on my side, that it had my best intentions in its heart. Looked out for me the way my sister looked out for me.

In the beginning, this outside voice did the same as the inside narrator. Commentated on the events that happened around me, only louder. Felt like watching my life on a television, never being directly involved in anything. Too afraid to be involved in anything. Wanting to be involved but scared, wondering if I had the right. When I talked with someone new, tried to do something I never did before, the voice grew louder. Critical of every move I made, upped the volume until I retreated, until I spoke to no one and never did anything new. The voice scared me, started to be there all the time, started to make suggestions about my actions. Tried to ignore these suggestions, but it came on stronger and stronger every day, becoming difficult to ignore.

Embarrassed, I hardly spoke. My sister was concerned and I knew she was trying to get my attention. Too far outside of me, too far away. The voice was close, right over my shoulder. It had the advantage. At first, it never asked me to do anything I didn't want to do. Soon it seemed anything I did, I did wrong. Anything I chose to do was the wrong thing to do. The voice started planting ideas in my head, started making bold and uncharacteristic suggestions.

I never blamed the voice for everything that happened to me. Definitely me that did all of those things. Me that set the actions in motion. The voice a guide, pushing me along. The ideas, the suggestions all seemed so real to me. All seemed like the right thing to do.

For the first time in my life, I truly believed in something unconditionally.

The ideas placed in my head became my own thoughts. The thoughts as real as anything else inside my brain. When a person touched a hot stove, got burned, they learned their lesson and never did it again. The voice dismantled this wire in my brain. The voice worked on my belief system. Planted those beliefs deep down inside, brought me into conflict with the outside world.

Several times a day I showered, believed being clean saved me from the bacteria circling in the air around me. Parts of my body scrubbed until red with irritation. Wore gloves in the summertime. The voice was good to me, congratulated me when I followed what it told me. The voice possessed a viciousness the times when I no longer listened. The voice would not let go so quickly and turned on me. Made other suggestions.

At fifteen years old I started a long journey into the darkest part of my life. Fell into a well of darkness, the walls slippery and unclimbable. Tried to numb the pain, stop the voice but it only came on stronger. Continually said I was not good enough, not strong enough, that I was weak. Stopped fighting it, gave into it when it started telling me to kill myself.

The transition occurred, there was a point where the voice seemed outside of myself, that it was talking to me like anyone else. It was so constant, so always there, that at some point I transferred over. The ideas the voice supplied become my ideas, I started to believe fiercely, as profoundly as when I fought it before. Yielded to it if only to stop the confusion, stop the fear. I unknowingly crossed over, became someone that worked in conjunction with the voice.

The tightness and the confusion actually went away, but only when I gave myself over entirely. A strange calmness came over me as I allowed it to take over completely.

At its mercy.

Very lost.

So lost.

Unrecognizable.

Nobody was home.

The invisible boy.

When the darkness totally surrounded my peripheral vision, only then, it felt right. The voice spoke over my left shoulder, whispered commentaries about my life and my decisions, chastising me as a sinner. During lunch hour at school, I stared at my lonely baloney sandwiched between two limp pieces of white bread. The voice was the strongest in quiet places like the library, like the washroom, like the long walk home when my sister could not accompany me.

A new girl named Mary sat down next to me in class. Desperate-looking and a fellow target of the various types of bullies. We became friends right away. Mary had all the signs of something not right at home - wore second-hand clothes, smiled a slight smile at inappropriate times. Her social cues were off. She was actually interested in school, thought it could take her places, could take her away. I walked Mary home at night to her small house. There was never anyone home. We did not talk very much, there was not much to talk about. What were we going to say? Me: I hear voices that are increasingly getting out of control. Mary: I have an unspeakable situation rumbling inside the paper thin walls of my house. What a fun conversation that would be!

We had comfort in each other’s company. The voice did not like Mary, told me every day. Mary was my first defiance against its commentaries. The voice said things I could never have uttered with my own words: Slut, her daddy crawls into her bed at night to tell her lullabies, weak, cries herself to sleep. And on and on, sometimes I couldn’t take it.

After a few weeks of silent walking to school and from school, Mary invited me inside her house. She wanted to pull back the curtain to show someone her life. I wasn’t sure if that someone should be me. We went inside anyway, the inside dirtier than the outside. Plates piled high along the counters, bugs everywhere, mold spreading out from the ceiling corners. We toured her house, she showed me her room, closed the door, we sat on the floor.

We kissed clumsily. Our teeth clicked. Mary's saliva tasted of blood. We kept trying, her hands touched me, the voice screamed, You are going to catch a disease. The voice so loud the front door was not heard. We failed in hearing the steps approaching from down the hallway. The door thrust open. Mary’s father, with the thickest neck I'd ever seen, grabbed me with one of his meaty paws, and literally threw me out the front door on to the porch. He stood in the doorway staring me down. I stared back, his stare was one of threat, mine was one of fear. I saw through a crack between him and the door, Mary stood behind him. She had tears in her eyes, she wanted me to do something, to stand up to him. The voice was too powerful, called me names, called me weak. I told it to shut up, spoke to it out loud. I never spoke out loud to it before. I called it names, swished around in a circle like a dog trying to catch its tail. Swore, shouted. I wanted it to leave. A light cloud of dust floated up around me. Stood up, stumbled down the steps, walked along the pathway to the street. Screamed out loud for it to stop, called it more names.

Then, blackness.

The next memory was waking up under a park bench a few blocks away from Mary’s house. My mind silent, mouth dry with dust. Clothes dirty. Stood up, walked the rest of the way home, snuck into my bedroom, tears cleaned the dust off my cheeks while I slept.

The next day at school Mary did not appear. I never saw her again. I walked by her house, empty. When I stepped up to the porch, the voice grew louder with every step. I ran away - I was not running towards something, I was running away from something.

At the time I did not recognize that I had specific triggers, situations that flipped a switch, activating the voice. Mary’s house was one such place. It was not the physical place, it was the kinetic energy that surrounded it, the experiences that haunted it. The energy fed off each other, connected to the mad energy inside my head, making it stronger, giving the voice power. People released all kinds of energy that, like ghosts, clung to the physical spaces I inhabited. Dangerous places are created by dangerous people. I became indirectly connected to these harmful environments by fate, not by choice.

After Mary, I succumbed to more of these negatively charged situations and environments. They were mostly the kind of places that I bought drugs, drank underage, sat beside other people burning themselves out. I had conversations with myself, no one noticed. They thought the drugs were strong. The drugs helped me fit in. I developed many superficial relationships that depended solely on the amount of drugs that were ingested, snorted, smoked. I went to parties, actually sometimes outgoing, sometimes just another person who tried to forget certain things about their life. The voice always lurked. The drugs were how I medicated myself, my attempt at dulling it into resignation. The drugs gave some relief, successfully dulled into quiet sabbaticals of submission. Soon, I realized the only way the voice would die, was if I died.

The voice was a parasite. I was the host that it manipulated, its only reason for existence was to torment. A lost soul that was murdered or cheated and karmically entered my mind. I was an excellent fit to push over the edge. Started believing it was god, at other times the devil. Marijuana dulled my mind, helped cope, forced the voice into dialogue with me in a relaxed way. When I was high, the voice forgot to criticize me, congratulated me on the downward spiral. We talked for hours, I took it into my confidence. I trusted the voice, told it everything when I was stoned. With the first toke, I knew that coming down would be the worst thing, that the voice came on stronger the soberer I got. It became loud, vibrated in my head, called me worthless, called me weak, called me pathetic.

The pot stopped working, the dialogue turned into arguments. I was thrown out of my dealer’s basement, he told me not to come back. Shouting, screaming, arguing with nobody. Called me crazy. My drug dealer called me crazy.

Mushrooms messed me up, amplified the voice. No sleep for three days. During the highest point, I had a profound experience of becoming an enlightened being, only to be torn down into pieces, ending up on top of a building ready to throw myself off.

Ecstasy was next. The chemicals reworked the wiring in my brain, connected things that were not meant to be connected. Most of all, it confused the voice. I went to huge parties, got lost in the crowd, screamed, shouted and danced. The problem with ecstasy became apparent when I first came down. I did not want to kill myself, I only wanted to sleep for days, for months. All resolve disappeared through this drug. I gave into the voice; happily. It became liberation for me. I thought I could be saved if I just gave in. Walking down the street late one morning after a party, the drug slowly left my system. All of the people I walked by on the road started unveiling their masks. I saw their ugly, hideous real faces, the ones that smiled, the ones that showed everyone the falseness of the human spirit. The morning after a party was like the day after Halloween, when people undressed from their costumes, revealing the disgusting pigments of their true selves.

Ecstasy messed me up real good.

At first, I thrashed with the voice. The drugs gave me the energy to do so, but I soon became depleted and malnourished. One night I said the wrong thing to the voice and a large man thought I was talking to him. Out in the alleyway behind the club, he hit me again and again. Teeth popped out of place, blood vessels splattered, brain rattled.

It felt good.

I could have fought back, but I just lay unmoving among the garbage. He pummelled me enough. One person came out, pissed on me until I moved, startled him. He finished his piss somewhere else. I lay there until the sun came up. Sat up, felt my face - all the bumps, bruises, swelling. Tried to locate my teeth on the filthy pavement. The voice was quiet for once. Maybe the big man beat it out of me? That morning I was not wearing a mask, but people gawked anyway. They turned away fast, looked the other way, tried to ignore me, couldn’t ignore me. I was too hideous, a reminder they didn't want to know about.

My sister found me passed out on my bed. Face stuck to the sheets from the dried blood. She took me to the hospital, changed my bandages, did not ask me who it was or what happened. She knew that something was not right.

My physical wounds healed from that night except for a scar. The scar started at the corner of my mouth, on the left side, branched out and returned to itself on my chin. When I looked at myself in the mirror for years to come, I saw that scar, looked inside it, scratched it, stared, waited to see if anything came out.

After the alleyway and in the days that followed, a calmness came over me in the form of the voice. It whispered non-stop, conjured a light white dust around my eyes that I felt surrounded my body. I stared through the window of my bedroom, looked to the sky, something outside spoke to me, cobwebs fell away from my mind.

Unbeknownst to me, my family was completely falling apart. My sister attempted to hold